The Hobbit

wrong house. As soon as I saw your funny faces on the door-step, I had my doubts. But treat it as the right one.
     Tell me what you want done, and I will try it, if I have to walk from here to the East of East and fight the wild Were-worms
     in the Last Desert. I had a great-great-great-grand-uncle once, Bullroarer Took, and—”
    “Yes, yes, but that was long ago,” said Gloin. “I was talking about
you
. And I assure you there is a mark on this door—the usual one in the trade, or used to be.
Burglar wants a good job, plenty of Excitement and reasonable Reward
, that’s how it is usually read. You can say
Expert Treasure-hunter
instead of
Burglar
if you like. Some of them do. It’s all the same to us. Gandalf told us that there was a man of the sort in these parts looking
     for a Job at once, and that he had arranged for a meeting here this Wednesday tea-time.”
    “Of course there is a mark,” said Gandalf. “I put it there myself. For very good reasons. You asked me to find the fourteenth
     man for your expedition, and I chose Mr. Baggins. Just let any one say I chose thewrong man or the wrong house, and you can stop at thirteen and have all the bad luck you like, or go back to digging coal.”
    He scowled so angrily at Gloin that the dwarf huddled back in his chair; and when Bilbo tried to open his mouth to ask a question,
     he turned and frowned at him and stuck out his bushy eyebrows, till Bilbo shut his mouth tight with a snap. “That’s right,”
     said Gandalf. “Let’s have no more argument. I have chosen Mr. Baggins and that ought to be enough for all of you. If I say
     he is a Burglar, a Burglar he is, or will be when the time comes. There is a lot more in him than you guess, and a deal more
     than he has any idea of himself. You may (possibly) all live to thank me yet. Now Bilbo, my boy, fetch the lamp, and let’s
     have a little light on this!”
    On the table in the light of a big lamp with a red shade he spread a piece of parchment rather like a map.
    “This was made by Thror, your grandfather, Thorin,” he said in answer to the dwarves’ excited questions. “It is a plan of
     the Mountain.”
    “I don’t see that this will help us much,” said Thorin disappointedly after a glance. “I remember the Mountain well enough
     and the lands about it. And I know where Mirkwood is, and the Withered Heath where the great dragons bred.”
    “There is a dragon marked in red on the Mountain,” said Balin, “but it will be easy enough to find him without that, if ever
     we arrive there.”
    “There is one point that you haven’t noticed,” said the wizard, “and that is the secret entrance. You see that rune on the
     West side, and the hand pointing to it from the other runes? That marks a hidden passage to the Lower Halls.” (Look at the map at the beginning of this book,
     and you will see there the runes.)
    “It may have been secret once,” said Thorin, “but how do we know that it is secret any longer? Old Smaug has lived there long
     enough now to find out anything there is to know about those caves.”
    “He may—but he can’t have used it for years and years.”
    “Why?”
    “Because it is too small. ‘ Five feet high the door and three may walk abreast ’ say the runes, but Smaug could not creep into
     a hole that size, not even when he was a young dragon, certainly not after devouring so many of the dwarves and men of Dale.”
    “It seems a great big hole to me,” squeaked Bilbo (who had no experience of dragons and only of hobbit-holes). He was getting
     excited and interested again, so that he forgot to keep his mouth shut. He loved maps, and in his hall there hung a large
     one of the Country Round with all his favourite walks marked on it in red ink. “How could such a large door be kept secret
     from everybody outside, apart from the dragon?” he asked. He was only a little hobbit you must remember.
    “In lots of ways,” said Gandalf. “But in what way this one has been hidden we don’t know without going to see. From what it
     says on the map I should guess there is a closed door which has been made to look exactly like the side of the Mountain. That
     is the usual dwarves’ method—I think that is right, isn’t it?”
    “Quite right,” said Thorin.
    “Also,” went on Gandalf, “I forgot to mention that with the map went a key, a small and curious key. Here it is!” he said,
     and handed to Thorin a key with a long barrel and intricate